Vin­ode Mam­chan

As of­fi­cials of the West In­dies Crick­et Board and the spon­sors were launch­ing the 2015 Nagi­co Su­per50 se­ries at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) in Cou­va, the rain was pelt­ing down on an al­ready rain-soaked out­field.

This brought a wor­ried look to the face of CEO of the TTCB Su­ruj Ra­goonath who was, at the time, bring­ing the me­dia up to date on the progress of prepa­ra­tions for the tour­na­ment.

The sec­ond edi­tion of the tour­na­ment gets off to­mor­row, with match­es at the Queen's Park Oval and at the NCC. At the NCC, Bar­ba­dos plays the CCC, while at the Queen's Park Oval Wind­wards Vol­ca­noes play the Guyana Jaguars. T&T's Red Force goes in­to ac­tion on Fri­day when they play against the West In­dies Un­der-19 team at Shaw Park. Ra­goonath said prepa­ra­tions were com­ing along nice­ly but the weath­er was prov­ing a de­ci­sive fac­tor.

He said: "We are com­ing along re­al­ly well on­ly if the sun could peep out and as­sist us. Every­thing else is on stream, the teams are com­ing in from to­day, so it is just for good weath­er on the fi­nal stretch here and every­thing will be fine."

The TTCB has tak­en a de­ci­sion not to pre-sell tick­ets and fans want­i­ng to see the match­es will have to pur­chase tick­ets on the day of the match­es at the venues. There are some tick­ets for on­ly the Red Force match­es and these will be pre-sold at Nagi­co's of­fices through­out T&T.

Mean­while, WICB di­rec­tor Bal­dath Ma­habir said the tour­na­ment was a make or break for many play­ers and they would want to come out and prove them­selves. "We have the Eng­land se­ries, as well as the Aus­tralian se­ries com­ing up and guys play­ing here would be look­ing to­wards se­lec­tion for those tours. In this re­gard I think that we are go­ing to see some re­al­ly good crick­et and we want to urge the fans to come out and sup­port the tour­na­ment, as they did last year."

Paul Dijkhof­fz ex­ec­u­tive mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Nagi­co said his com­pa­ny was re­al­ly hap­py with the tour­na­ment thus far and was hop­ing as ex­cit­ing fi­nals, as was had in 2014.

"We are hap­py to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the crick­et, we are in 19 ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean and we are in­volved in crick­et in some way or the oth­er in all 19 ter­ri­to­ries. We are look­ing for­ward to an­oth­er great tour­na­ment and hope­ful­ly we will have an­oth­er won­der­ful fi­nals like we had last time around," he said.